Using the UTF-8 Character Encoding - Prior to MySQL server version 4.1, the UTF-8 character encoding was not supported by the server, however the JDBC driver could use it, allowing storage of multiple character sets in latin1 tables on the server.

Starting with MySQL-4.1, this functionality is deprecated. If you have applications that rely on this functionality, and can not upgrade them to use the official Unicode character support in MySQL server version 4.1 or newer, add the following property to your connection URL:

useOldUTF8Behavior=true

Server-side Prepared Statements - Connector/J 3.1 will automatically detect and use server-side prepared statements when they are available (MySQL server version 4.1.0 and newer). If your application encounters issues with server-side prepared statements, you can revert to the older client-side emulated prepared statement code that is still presently used for MySQL servers older than 4.1.0 with the following connection property:

useServerPrepStmts=false